


A Thousand Blended Notes

by Teacandles



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: 1950s, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Busking, Gen, I Don't Even Know, Poets and Violins, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-12
Updated: 2013-10-12
Packaged: 2017-12-29 04:09:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1000701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teacandles/pseuds/Teacandles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erik found him on a Thursday, somewhere in the middle of bumfuck nowhere Minnesota, crouched among some empty wooden crates outside the back of a gas station with a lumpy, unlit cigarette dangling from his lips and a lost look in his eyes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Thousand Blended Notes

**Author's Note:**

> Expansion of something I wrote for [this prompt](http://xmen-firstkink.livejournal.com/9701.html?thread=21935845#t21935845). My apologies for the half-assed summary that isn't a summary at all. I fear that I've forgotten how to write. The title for this comes from Wordsworth's "[Lines Written in Early Spring](http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/181415)."

Erik found him on a Thursday, somewhere in the middle of bumfuck nowhere Minnesota, crouched among some empty wooden crates outside the back of a gas station with a lumpy, unlit cigarette dangling from his lips and a lost look in his eyes.

There was nothing special about the kid, really, except perhaps for the violin case at his feet. Erik had seen more than enough buskers singing, dancing and strumming their way to their next meal or bus ticket when he’d been closer to the Cities. The violin wasn’t exactly a unique choice, but definitely a bit…different? _At least for someone out here_ , Erik thought. It was certainly a romantic choice of instrument, not often seen outside of subway platforms and the occasional crowded city corner. That was, of course, if the case even had an instrument in it. But it was the case that drew Erik over, and it was the sound of his footsteps drew the kid’s attention up from the pavement.

His eyes were blue. Blue, blue, blue like the sky on a clear summer day over an endless stretch of golden wheat in Iowa. Blue like the cheap paint peeling off the doors of Erik’s car near the pumps at the front of the station. Blue like the little scrap of torn fabric dangling from the kid’s pocket. Erik felt like he was back in high school, writing terrible sonnets dedicated to the rustle of Anna Himmelsbach’s dress or the oil-slick curls of Mr. Monroe’s mustache. The stranger smiled at Erik around the cigarette in his mouth, paying not a single wit to the near open-mouthed stare he was receiving.

“Got a light?”

Erik fumbled around in his pocket for a moment before tossing his lighter over, and the kid caught it with ease. There was a brief mumbled thanks that Erik only half heard as he walked over to the wall where the kid sat. The concrete felt good and solid against his back, cool and comforting.

“What are you doing out here, kid?” Erik asked as his lighter was passed back to him. Rough, callused fingertips brushed against his hand for a fleeting moment. _A musician’s hands_ , he thought. Perhaps there was a violin after all.

“It’s Charles,” the kid responded, letting a thin stream of smoke billow from his lips before smiling up at Erik once more. His voice was strange and oddly clipped, like he was trying to hide something in the way he talked or a half-forgotten accent lingering from childhood was trying to worm its way out of his mouth. “And I’m not really a kid,” he said, and the lost look in his eyes grew deeper, creasing his brow for a second before it passed, and the smile was back. “Older than I look.”

“Could’a fooled me,” said Erik quietly, turning his eyes west toward the empty expanse of fields and cloud-specked sky before them. “And you didn’t answer my question. What are you doing out here? Hoping some john’ll come pick you up by the restrooms?” he asked, only half joking.

Charles laughed, quiet but genuine, and Erik felt his own lips quirk up in a smile. He’d only known him for a minute or two, but something about Charles—the earnest lilt in his voice despite the poor attempt at disguising his accent (some odd mixture of East Coast twang and rounded, high class, honest-to-god England English vowels), or maybe it was the easy way he held himself in the presence of a complete and total stranger—put Erik at ease, made it seem as though they had known each other a lifetime when they really barely knew each other’s names.

“No, no. This isn’t exactly the best place for that, I imagine, what with the lack of…everything. I’m just resting my feet for a bit. My ride ditched me about four miles back. I’m hoping to catch a lift with someone headed east.” Charles’s eyes went a bit distant at that, and he took a deep drag from his cigarette, letting the smoke age for a moment on his tongue before releasing it out into the open air.

Erik felt his heart creep up into his throat. “How far do you need to go?” he asked, his voice much smoother and calmer than he felt.

“Probably farther than you could take me.” Charles looked up at Erik and shot him another grin. “Why? You hoping for some company on that long and lonely road ahead of you?”

“Maybe,” Erik replied, still not looking back at Charles. “Or maybe I just like the idea of saving endearing strangers outside of gas station bathrooms in the middle of nowhere.”

Charles closed his eyes and sucked in another deep drag from his cigarette before flicking it to the ground. The little orange embers flickered and slowly died against the pavement, and the silence grew thick and heavy between them. Erik sighed and pushed away from the wall. “Look, I’m going to go take a leak. When I come back, you can follow me or stay here; I don’t really care which. Just know that you have a ride waiting, but it won’t be waiting long.” And with that, he turned and walked away toward the dingy restroom.

Charles was gone when Erik stepped back outside, his little patch of wall strangely empty and sad without his presence. Erik fumbled with the keys in his pocket and quickened his pace toward his car, anticipation pumping hard through his chest. The kid had either taken him up on his offer or bolted. He swallowed and smoothed the tips of his fingers over the jagged edges of his keys. If Charles had any sense he would have left, he told himself over and over again, bracing himself for the wrench of disappointment that was sure to tear away at his gut.

But Erik saw Charles as he rounded the corner toward the pumps, chatting amiably with one of the attendants as the man wiped down the windshield of an old red sedan. Charles’s case was nestled comfortably in the back seat of Erik’s car, resting gently against the window like it had always been there. Charles looked up as Erik walked over and shot him a rather disarming smile.

“Ready to go?”

“If you are.”

As they settled into their seats and the engine grumbled to life, Erik chanced a look at his companion and caught a flash of silver from under Charles’s coat. Dog tags. Military.

Erik straightened his hands on the wheel as they pulled out onto the road, an endless litany of questions burning through his brain. His fingers itched for a pen; he could practically see the words flowing out of him onto the page, words inspired by his mysterious, sad-eyed stranger. He said nothing, though, as they veered down the endless ribbon of road before them. There would be time for all that later.

\---

Erik, as much as he loved words, had never been much of one for small talk. It was so much easier to express himself with pen and paper, when he had a chance to think and the right things to say came as easy to him as breathing.

It was different with Charles.

The man hardly knew when to shut up once Erik’s car was purring comfortably around them, chasing the roadways toward the horizon.

He talked about the weather, cars (of which he had little knowledge, but pretended to anyway), how he never learned to speak French. He talked about music and the hope that burned through him every time he had to draw out a melody for enough loose change to grab his first meal in what felt like ages. Erik barely said a word as Charles filled the empty spaces left by the wind gusting in through the open windows with his voice. And it was fine. It was pleasant, even.

As the sky began to soften with the warm colors of sunset, Erik’s mind wandered to hunkering down for the night, and that’s when he realized that Charles had fallen silent. Erik glanced over at his companion, sure that he had fallen asleep. Charles had pillowed his head on his bent arm, chin pressed into the hollow of his elbow. His eyes had picked up that faraway look again, and Erik’s mind flashed back to the dog tags. He cleared his throat, and Charles looked up at him, smiling sheepishly.

“I’m sorry, I missed that, my friend.”

His friend. Erik couldn’t help but grin at that. Charles seemed to be everyone’s friend. “Nothing to miss. I didn’t say anything, but we should probably be on the lookout for lodging. It’s starting to get dark.”

Charles hummed low in his throat, the sound almost swallowed up by the air rushing past them. “Do you think there’s anything out here?”

Erik was hesitant with his answer. “Won’t know until we look.” They hadn’t seen much in the way of civilization for some time now, save for the scattered farmhouses dotting the endless stretches of fields. He doubted they would find a motel any time soon. Usually, if he couldn’t find somewhere to sleep, he pulled off to the side of the road and wrote in the cramped backseat of his car until it was too dark to see, and he nodded off until morning. Sleeping under the stars within the safe confines of modern machinery. He glanced over at his companion. He’d suggest taking shifts driving, but as much as he liked Charles, Erik wasn’t quite sure he trusted the man with his car.

As if he could hear what Erik was thinking, Charles straightened and pulled away from the window, fixing Erik with a lazy smile. “We could just stop here for the night. On the road. I’m afraid I’m no good behind the wheel. Never quite got the hang of it.”

Erik huffed out a quiet, humorless laugh. “Are you sure that’s safe? You know nothing about me. I could have a hatchet or something hiding in the trunk.”

Heavy silence fell between the two of them before Charles’s lips split open in a raucous bout of laughter. “Erik, I highly doubt that you are going to murder me in my sleep. You’re a lot kinder than people make you out to be.”

Erik frowned at that. For all the comfort he gleaned from the other man’s presence, Charles was still a stranger to him. “What do you know about me?” he asked quietly, almost to himself. He certainly wasn’t expecting an answer.

“Everything,” Charles replied with a laugh before pointing to a spot in the distance where the grass thinned out into gravel and dust along the asphalt. “Pull over just down the road. We can kip there for the night.”

\---

Erik woke with a stiff neck and what felt like a bruise on his thigh from where his leg was jammed against the gear stick. It had been a while since he’d slept in the front seat, cramped and pressed together like a discarded piece of paper, but Charles had won the back seat from him with nothing more than a smile. Cheeky bastard.

Erik straightened as best he could and fumbled around for the door handle with clumsy, sleep-addled fingers. He could see the rounded curve of Charles’s curled body in the backseat in the murky dark of early morning, his sides rising and falling in the rhythmic pattern of sleep. Dawn had not yet broken in full, but there was just enough light for Erik to navigate his way out of the car toward a high tangle of weeds where he could hopefully relieve himself with some semblance of privacy.

It was a quiet morning, not even broken by birdsong. Dew slid from the grass to bleed into the bottom of his pants as Erik made his way toward the weeds. There was a peace to the moment that was both comforting and unsettling. He cast a quick look back at the car to be sure nothing had changed—Erik liked Charles well enough, but the man was still a mystery. Erik didn’t have much, and he couldn’t afford to lose his car here to a charming stranger. All was quiet and still, and Erik moved on.

He closed his eyes and breathed in deep as the gentle breeze danced about his face, and his body drained of tension. His hands itched for a pen as his mind wandered away into the dim morning light, an endless litany of words racing through his mind as the sun began its slow ascent into the sky.

A soft, sweet sound woke him from his reverie. Music. Notes sliding and flitting about like birdsong, high and low in turn—a thousand blended notes, familiar, and yet like he’d never heard before. It made his heart faint and drew the words from his head like water spilling from his hands.

The car. Charles. The violin. Ah, the violin. Erik wiped his hands on his jeans and made his way back to the car, the weeds rustling in his wake.

Charles’s bow seemed a mere extension of his arm as it pulled the strings of his battered instrument to life. He was no master, but the emotion behind the complex floating song pulled him forward, his feet stumbling over themselves as he approached. The melody, though often quick and fluttering, felt sweet and sad, bringing forth a sort of half-forgotten bitterness to Erik’s tongue, like a foreign herb.

Charles drew the last note into silence and fell back against the car door, his face turned to the swiftly mounting crimson glow of sunrise, the tip of his bow trailing in the dirt at his feet.

“That was beautiful.” Erik’s voice seemed far too loud, though it was barely more than a whisper. Charles made no move to show that he’d heard him save for the minute drain of tension from his shoulders. “I’ve never heard anything quite like that before. Where did you learn?” Erik said, louder this time, as he joined Charles to lean against the side of the car.

“My mother insisted,” Charles replied, never once turning his face away from the rising sun. His lips turned up in a sardonic grin. “She wanted me to learn the piano, but I would have none of it. Couldn’t sit still long enough. No patience for it, unlike my sister. The violin at least let me wander while I played if I memorized the music.”

“Your sister?”

Charles let his bow drop, and he brought the scuffed scroll of his violin to his lips, his gaze going distant. The braided rope he’d tied to it brushed against his bent elbows, and the moment froze in Erik’s mind like a photograph.

“Yes,” he replied softly. “My Raven. She’s going to be so terribly upset with me.” The last was said more to himself than to Erik.

“Is that where you’re headed? To her?” The clouds were painted with oranges and pinks.

“She wrote to me, you know. While I was away,” Charles mumbled into the wood of his violin, his callused fingers clutching its thin body like a life raft. Erik glanced down at Charles’s chest, at the small metal tags that hung below the hollow of his throat like shackles. He said nothing, waiting instead for Charles to speak again.

Charles lowered his instrument and turned a sad, lost smile toward Erik. “Do you think she’ll hate me? When I show up at her doorstep like a dog? I never wrote her back.”

 _Does she think you’re dead?_ The words hung on the tip of Erik’s tongue, but he said nothing. Words had always come so easily to him, and yet this man had stolen them from him with little more than a look.

“I abandoned her, Erik.”

“But you’re going back. That’s where we’re headed, is it not?”

“We?” The words were soft and vulnerable, like Charles could hardly believe what he was hearing.

“Of course.” Erik shot him a crooked smile and pulled out a crumpled pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket. He tapped one free before tossing the box to Charles. “You’re not alone in this anymore.” Those blue, blue eyes settled on him, and Charles’s face slowly brightened with perhaps the first true smile Erik had seen upon his lips.

Charles turned the cigarette box over in his hand, his fingers rubbing the worn cardboard like a lover. “No, my friend,” he said with a soft, breathy laugh. “I’m not alone.”


End file.
